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10/11/2026
Gaetano Donizetti: Maria Stuarda
Lisette Oropesa (Maria Stuarda), Kate Lindsey (Elisabetta), Bekhzod Davronov (Roberto, Conte di Leicester), Aleksei Kulagin (Giorgio Talbot), Thomas Lehman (Lord Guglielmo Cecil), Nino Gotoshia (Anna Kennedy), Dancers of Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance (SEAD), Konzertvereinigung Wiener Staatsopernchor, Alan Woodbridge (chorus master), Wiener Philharmoniker, Antonello Manacorda (conductor), Ulrich Rasche (Stage Director and Set Designer), Sara Schwartz (Costume Designer), Paul Blackman (Choreography), Florian Hetz (Video Designer), Marco Giusti (Lighting Designer), Yvonne Gebauer (Dramaturg), Michael Beyer (Video Director)
Live recording: Grosses Festspielhaus, Salzburg Festival, Austria (August 2025) – 138’
2 DVDs C Major Entertainment 773008 (or Blu-ray 773104) – PCM Stereo / DTS 5.1 – Picture Format NTSC 16:9 – Region 0 – Booklet in English, German and French – Subtitles in English, German, French, Spanish, Korean and Japanese (Distributed by Naxos of America)
 
Singing the role of Maria Stuarda for the first time in a staged production, Lisette Oropesa must have been grateful for her love of running and consequent fitness as she has to walk her way through this performance. Literally. Ulrich Rasche uses two huge revolving discs for his stages: they are like giant coins that slowly spin throughout the whole show – they tilt, they can swap position, but they never grind to a halt. A third disc is suspended overhead, sometimes with videos projected onto it. Seen from above, the discs look like clock faces, or at times like spiders’ webs, a neat if obvious reference to the political snares of the story. Time marches on, and on, and on...the performers trudge endlessly. At first, it is quite mesmerising, but by midpoint in the opera, it is irritating. But hats off to everyone involved for the immense amount of rehearsal that must have gone into being in the right place at the right time. One slip and they’d be shunted out of the spotlight; I doubt any of them will ever (again) want to eat in a revolving restaurant or even step onto a big wheel unless sedated.
Predictably, each queen has her own disc. Elisabetta is in black, Maria in white, and both are followed by a pack of young men who endlessly posture around the singer without ever breaking into dance. Once again, an arresting idea that starts to grate after a while. The discs never quite touch, so if you are looking forward to a good old‑fashioned slap when the queens meet, you are in for disappointment. Watching on it film, I can’t judge how the production sat in the theatre – the Grosses Festspielhaus stage is notoriously wide, so I imagine the discs filled it neatly, and each can move to the fore to focus on one queen, but as a viewer at home, the whole production becomes rather spatially abstract.
Antonello Manacorda conducts with a sure hand, which is just as well as his rhythms which dictate the walking pace. Orchestral textures are clean, and he allows decorations of repeats. The orchestra is excellent. The chorus is kept offstage throughout, but sounds precise and well‑drilled. If you wonder where your money goes when you fork out over Eur450 for a ticket at Salzburg, one clue is when we eventually do see the chorus at its curtain call, everyone is dressed identically to match the production. How remarkably lavish! Sara Schwartz’s costumes are elegant: simple, cut on the bias, discretely beaded, like a particularly pared down couture collection.
Lisette Oropesa is a Maria of distinction. She can spin an endless line and also decorate it as though extemporising, and she is happy in alt. Her Maria suffers with dignity, not overplayed, and she rises to her confrontation with Elisabetta with an exciting flash of anger. Kate Lindsey is also well worth watching as the English queen, slinking around her disc in black and not overplaying the villain. She breaks down emotionally in Act II, once again, convincingly handled. Her high mezzo is perhaps too soft‑grained for the role but she certainly knows how to spit out a line – in fact, her livid ‘Guardie! Ola!’, when insulted by Maria, veers almost a tone sharp, just about the only time Lindsey goes vocally wayward.
Bekhzod Davronov’s Leicester is very good, his tenor fresh and buoyant, and his voice records very well. Though the role is not the most exciting, Leicester is a bit of a cipher, but Davronov provides youthful ardour and anguish in appropriate amounts. Aleksei Kulagin and Thomas Lehman as Talbot and Cecil, respectively, are both fine, but neither role seems to have captured Rasche’s imagination. Nino Gotoshia does well with the little Anna Kennedy offers.
The production comes into its own in the last scene as Maria is carried on in a simple sheer shift, her supporting dancers now in loincloths, the staging suddenly searingly bright. Oropesa really rises to the occasion, her prayer particularly impressive in its dignity, though by this point she must have felt like interpolating ‘But I would walk 500 miles, and I would walk 500 more’. The final moments are difficult to see; Maria’s disc tilts and her dancers tumble towards the audience into a pile on the stage apron whilst Maria seems to fall from the back as the overhead disc descends. I imagine it was more coherent in live performance, but on film it doesn’t work. And note: my copy promised subtitles in six languages but none were, in fact, available when played.
Francis Muzzu
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